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More About Mistake-Proofing

After yesterday’s post about trucks crashing into the famous 11foot8 bridge and mistake proofing, I got the feeling I should drive home my key point that the problem isn’t with the driver, it is with the environment.

As of this writing,  Jürgen has recorded 154 crashes of overheight vehicles into the bridge.

And I’ll put even money that if all of the data were known, this process would pass any test for statistical control and we are getting what we should expect from a stable system. It might not be what we want, but it is what we should expect. (All images are copyright  Jürgen Henn, 11foot8.com)

So addressing the individual incidents probably isn’t a solution. In any case, it is unlikely that any driver will repeat the mistake.* For the TWI folks – this isn’t really a Job Relations type of problem. It might feel like it is, but it isn’t.

In the Factory

I was working with a company with a similar problem. Their inspectors kept missing defects. The response was often to say “I don’t see how she could have missed that!” and even write them up for failure to do something that wasn’t particularly well specified.

But the fact on the ground was, like the bridge, the misses weren’t confined to any particular individuals, any particular shift, any particular anything. People missed things all of the time because the expectations greatly exceeded the limitations of what humans can do for 12 hours (or even one hour). It isn’t an inspection problem. (The reliance on inspection vs. upstream controls is another topic for another day.)

People Work Within a System

It is all too easy to fall into the “bad apple” fallacy and seek out someone who was negligent. It feels good, like we did something about the problem. But the problem will happen again, with someone else. Then I hear frustrated managers start to make disparaging comments about their entire workforce that “doesn’t care” about quality.

I challenged a quality manager to do that inspection job for two hours – not even a complete shift – under the watchful eye of the inspector whose job he was trying to do. Funny – he was a lot slower to assign blame after that experience. He couldn’t keep up.

Deming was pretty clear about the ineffectiveness of exhortation as a way to get better performance. “Be more careful!” might well work for one individual for a short time. “Making an example of someone” might well work for a group for a short time. But there are norms, and the system will return to those norms very quickly. There are simple limits to what humans can focus on and for how long.

The Bridge is a Metaphor

To be clear, the bridge represents a working system, but it is different than what we would find in a company. This is public infrastructure, and the truck drivers that get featured on the videos are not part of a single organization.

This means that you have more control than the city engineers in Durham do. You can establish procedures, ask questions, train people, have them practice, alert them to the Gregson Street Bridge on their route. You can make sure your navigation system routes your trucks around the low bridges. You can support your people so they are less likely to even end up in the situation. All of these are system changes – and that is what it will take to change the outcome.

Change the System: Raising the Bridge

In late 2019 the city of Durham, in coordination with the railroad who owns the bridge, did actually raise the bridge by 8 inches. It is now 11 feet 16 inches (3.76m).

And that is a legitimate approach. Rather than trying to create infallible humans, what can we do to make the system less vulnerable to fallible humans.

While that likely reduced the number of trucks that hit the bridge…

*Caveat: There is one video where a truck seems to avoid the bridge, then circle back around and hit it. And another video where a truck that hit this bridge then proceeded to run into another low bridge with the damaged truck.

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Mistake Proofing – Getting People’s Attention

Besides being a great source of schadenfreude, Jürgen Henn’s website, 11foot8.com offers some great insight in the difficulty of effective mistake-proofing.

Background

The clearance between the road and the railroad bridge at 201 Gregson Street in Durham, North Carolina is officially 11 feet 8 inches (3.55 meters).

A typical rental box truck is about 12 feet high (3.65 meters).

The result:

Penske rental truck smashed under low bridge.

The more astute of you may have noticed the “OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN” sign just above the smashed truck.

Well before the truck approaches the intersection, it passes under a height sensor. If the vehicle is overheight, the OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN sign comes on and starts to flash, and the traffic lights turn red.

While this effort did mitigate the problem, obviously there are drivers who simply do not notice. Lots of them. Jürgen has cameras trained on the intersection and captures over a dozen crashes in a typical year. As a result, his website has attracted international attention. See the short documentary here: http://11foot8.com/about/the-documentary/

Familiar Tasks = “In the Zone”

The human brain is an amazing thing. It also works by deceiving us. It creates the illusion of complete awareness of the things around us when, in reality, we are simply aware of a model our brains have constructed of what we perceive to be there.

It is also an amazing engine at engaging actions based on pattern matching. For example –

In sessions I facilitate, I routinely ask people if they can recall a time when they arrived home after work but realized they didn’t remember driving the route. Nearly every hand in the room goes up. That is pretty amazing because driving is an incredibly complex task. But, assuming you get a license in your mid-teens, by the time you are in your early 20s, most people don’t give it much thought. (There is a reason your insurance rates drop when you turn 25.)

It has become a hard-wired neural pattern, a series of habits, a programmed set of responses that are operating below below the conscious and deliberate thinking part of the brain. This is really good because this process is much faster and more responsive than the alternative. Think about how it felt to be driving when you were just learning – or how it feels to be doing anything new when you are just learning.

The downside to this amazing programming is that things that don’t jar us into consciousness often go unnoticed.

And the more familiar, the more expert, we are with the task at hand, the more likely this will happen.

Levels of Mistake Proofing

I like to talk about three levels of mistake-proofing. Four actually, if you count Zero as a level.

  • Level 0 – the task must be performed correctly from memory.
  • Level 1 – there is a discrete task of checking build into the job.
  • Level 2 – there is an active indication when a mistake is about to be made (or has just been made and there is still time to correct without consequences).
  • Level 3 – there is active prevention that gets in the way of making the mistake.

The OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN sign is a Level 2. The driver has already passed signs informing him of the bridge clearance about 100m before the bridge.

The height sensors are on the poles just past the speed limit signs.

Low clearance signs about 100m before the bridge. (Google Street View)

Then in the next block, there is another sign telling the driver to turn:

Approaching the last intersection (Google Street View)

And finally the light changes and the OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN sign illuminates.

And still they miss it.

(Direct YouTube link for the email readers: https://youtu.be/I0BJmC6u7MU)

To be clear, the vast majority of truck drivers don’t hit the bridge. But over a dozen a year do. (There were more before the flashing sign was put in.)

“Pay Attention!” = Fundamental Attribution Error

As we watch Jürgen’s videos it is easy to assign character attributes to the drivers who hit the bridge. If only they were better drivers. (The vast majority people who are asked to rate their driving skill will say they are “above average” by the way. Think about that.)

But it is human nature to get lulled into a bit of complacency when engaging a routine task- and driving is a routine task in spite of the complexity.

Now – think about the people in your organization. How many opportunities to they have to make a mistake every day… every hour… in the course of their work? How many of those possible mistakes have serious or expensive consequences?

They are experts at what they do. And they don’t make many mistakes. And they usually catch themselves before there is a problem. But the Law of Large Numbers says “Given enough opportunities, the unlikely is inevitable.”

Can anyone reading this honestly say they have never inadvertently run a stop sign? Yet accidents rarely occur. Now and then there is some panic braking, and rarely there is a collision.

Yet it is really easy to single out the person who:

Performs the work the same way, in the same conditions as everyone else.

Makes the same mistakes, just as often, as everyone else.

Just like everyone else, usually they are caught in time, or other conditions aren’t present for a bad outcome.

But this time everything lined up and BANG – the defective product got missed, or the leak wasn’t noticed before the sump went dry.

Then that person gets singled out for “not following procedure” when nobody follows procedure.

Job Instruction “Key Points” = Opportunity

In a Job Breakdown for TWI Job Instruction we assign a “Key Point” as something the learner must remember specifically because it:

  • Might result in a hazard – injure the worker or someone else.
  • “Make or break the job” – if something isn’t done a specific way, the task fails.
  • Is a “knack” or technique that makes it easier to do.

Those first two are red flags. You are asking your team member to memorize critical to safety and critical to quality tasks. My challenge: How many of those key points can you “mistake proof” out of the job breakdown?

Finally – rather than the sensors and flashing lit signs, there is this approach from “somewhere on the Internet.”

Warning Sign: If you hit this sign, you will hit that bridge.

That is awesome because even if the driver doesn’t see the sign, the BANG! may get his attention in time for it to register and stop. In the Durham, NC example above, apparently this wouldn’t work because there are legitimate reasons for trucks to come down the street up to the intersection just before the bridge. After that, it is really too late unless the driver is already aware that he has to turn.

Oh – and by the way – you can get souvenirs from the Gregson Street Bridge at  Jürgen’s store here:  https://squareup.com/store/11foot8-dot-com/ 🙂

There is a follow-up to this post here: https://theleanthinker.com/2020/05/28/more-about-mistake-proofing/

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Meta-Patterns: Thoughts for Discussion

I’ll be sending out the Zoom meeting link this (Wednesday) afternoon (May 6, 2020) for the Thursday (11 am Pacific) open discussion on the Meta-Patterns of Innovation.

1901 Wright Glider
Wright Brothers’ Experiments with the 1901 Glider

For those who only got email on the original post, this is a direct link to the video I was referencing: https://videopress.com/v/geNgzN4e

There are still lots of spots for anyone who is interested. Click Here to open the Contact Page, and let me know your email address and I’ll add you to the list.

Hugh asked a really good question in his email that relates to how to put these concepts (that are somewhat abstract and philosophical) into practical application in an organization.

I think that is a really good starting off point for a discussion, especially among change agents.

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KataCon4 Keynote: The Meta-Patterns of Innovation

Yes – the title isn’t a typo. This goes back to KataCon 4 in Atlanta. Though I had attended all of them, this was the first time I actually spoke at one. My task was to follow Rich Sheridan and share why I thought his message was a powerful one for an audience of Kata Geeks even if he wasn’t specifically talking about Toyota Kata in his company.

As an experiment, I took the sound recording from my talk and synchronized it with the slide deck. (That is harder that it sounds, by the way.) As another experiment I am sharing it via hosting on WordPress (the back-end of this site) rather than YouTube or a similar host. It is a little over 13 minutes long, and there is another experiment below it.

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Toyota Kata: What If There Is No Takt Time?

The default Starter Kata for “Grasp the Current Condition” places heavy emphasis on takt time and variation in timing of a regular process. However a lot of processes, both within manufacturing as well as in other domains such as health care, don’t seem to have any kind of regular heartbeat.

As Steve Medland pointed out at KataCon, this can present a struggle for a novice learner, as well as for a lot of coaches.

Before we get into ways to deal with this, I want to level set on what takt time is, and what it does for us.

Why Takt Time?

From an industrial engineering standpoint, takt time is an expression of how much capacity you need.

The traditional way to calculate takt time is to divide the total time available by the output required in that time. This gives us a “time per unit of output” that we have to achieve if we are going to get everything done. In other words, takt time is the required rate of production.

The whole goal of an ideal “Just-in-Time” system is that we have only the capacity required to meet the demand. If the system is even able to run faster than the takt time, we have excess capacity. Excess capacity = extra cost, and “overproduction” is a symptom of having excess capacity. Note that this is the “ideal” – it isn’t anything we can realistically achieve. The concept gives us a direction to strive toward.

Also Note: Determining how much capacity you need has absolutely nothing to do with how much capacity you have.

OK, that answered the question “What is takt time?” but not the question I posed: “Why takt time?” After all, I could just as easily say I need the capacity to product 96 units per day. But that doesn’t answer the question, “How fast do I need to go?” And that is what takt time gives us.

Think of it this way. If I need to make 96 units during the course of an 8 hour day, then I need to have made 48 units in four hours.

To make 48 units in four hours, I need to make 24 units in 2 hours. Which means 12 units in 1 hour. 6 units in 30 minutes. 3 units in 15 minutes. One unit every 5 minutes. And that is my takt time. (This is an oversimplification since I did not subtract break times to make the math easier to make the point.)

Thinking of it this way gives the people doing the work a quick way to know, very quickly, if they are ahead or behind. They can ask, “How long did this unit take?” and compare that with, “How long did we have?”

A Point of Comparison

Which brings us to the “Why.”

If I measure the time between units output at the end of the line, I can compare the actual time interval (the cycle time) with the required time interval (the takt time).

  • If we need to complete a unit every five minutes (takt time), AND
  • We know that our process can do that when there are NO problems, THEN
  • We can see very quickly if there IS a problem. We have to attack a source of variation and work on stability.
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Heartbeat.png

On the other hand,

  • If we need to complete a unit every five minutes (takt time), and
  • We know that our process is not capable of doing so even when running smoothly, then
  • We know we have to change the entire system to make rate.

Distinguishing between these two conditions is the main benefit of building a cycle time run chart (step 3 in the Starter Kata of Grasp the Current Condition.) That is a topic for another post, or just get a copy of the Toyota Kata Practice Guide ;).

The issue comes when people don’t see a steady rate of demand.

Sometimes they generally know how much time is in the day, but they see demand fluctuating all over the place.

This is true in manufacturing work as well as other cases, such as engineering work, software development, and a lot of cases in health care. The time to complete one “unit of work” varies, so it is hard to see any kind of cadence to the output even if the work is steady.

Key Question: Are you ahead or behind?

And how can you tell?

Regardless of all of the variation, though, we still want to know the answer to questions such as “Are we on track to get everything done today?” or “Has my load exceeded my capacity?” or “Is the backlog increasing, decreasing, or holding steady?” unless we are simply relying on luck. Asking and answering these questions is the purpose of many of the “lean tools” – including takt time.

When to Bring it Up

Everything above, though, is information for the coach to keep in mind. What a lot of us (myself included) do all too often is take beginners into advanced application way too fast. We forget what it is like to be overwhelmed with just getting through the day, and the limits that places on anyone for taking in new concepts.

I bring it up for the coach because I think the chances of the learner discovering it on their own are significantly lower (perhaps close to zero) if the coach is starting in the same place.

If you are getting pushback on the concept, it might be time to back off a bit and give your learner some space.

Steve Medland had a mini (5 minute) presentation at KataCon 2020 that briefly addressed some of his experience with this situation.

He pointed out that the default worksheet templates for Grasp the Current Condition and Establishing a Target Condition emphasize process timing and cadence pretty heavily.

From Steve Medlin’s KataCon presentation
From Steve Medlin’s KataCon presentation

And the alternative is a blank template:

From Steve Medland’s KataCon presentation

Steve makes a good case that there ought to be something that provides a more general structure without removing all structure. I agree – as a coach, structure is one of the things you are bringing to the table. Any learner, at any level of expertise, is more deeply embroiled in the process itself than in the process of improving the process. Having some structure really helps.

The key is to adjust the structure to fit the situation.

From Steve Medland’s KataCon presentation

With beginners, the concept of takt time can be distracting, even paralyzing. Even more so if we use alien jargon like “takt time.”*

Using a hybrid structure like Steve proposes can get the learner moving into process analysis without getting wrapped up on terminology, or struggling with something she sincerely believes has nothing resembling a cadence.

Then, when the opportunity arises, the coach can still gently, but persistently, ask “How often does this need to be done?” and “How do we know if we are ahead or behind?”

Often the resistance is less about knowing there is some kind of schedule, and more about just being overwhelmed by all of the chaos that prevents any kind of stability.

Steve and I agree that timing is important. And I agree that it is important enough that it might be best to hold off on introducing it as a concept so we don’t create resistance unnecessarily.

But please don’t completely throw away measuring time just because it is hard. In fact, the harder it is, the more important it likely is. When it is easy to determine takt time, we likely already have an idea how long things are taking. The less appropriate takt time seems, the more critical it becomes to dig deep into where the time is going.

*Believe it or not, Godwin’s Law can even be applied to “takt time” if you research your history enough.

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Simon Sinek – Remote Teaming Tips

How Remote Teams Can Connect Meaningfully – Simon Sinek – March 20, 2020

We are all being pushed into the zone beyond our knowledge base right now – having to rapidly adapt and adjust to different ways of working together.

This morning Craig Stritar forwarded a cool little video to me from Simon Sinek’s YouTube channel. In it Steve Shedletzky, a member of Simon’s team, introduces their weekly huddle – a way that this team, which has been working remotely for years, maintains their connection to one another.

One of the keys here is that this meeting is not a conversation about the business at hand. There are other meetings for that. This one is intended to strengthen the social bonds of the group.

They dedicate 75 minutes a week to this task. The video is a condensed version to give us a taste of their structure.

And it is structure that makes it work. It is structure that makes sure no individual dominates the conversation, and structure that keeps it from becoming the kind of wide-ranging conversation that happens over beer and pizza.

It is structure that gives them the freedom to hear and be heard.

With that – here is the video.

For those who can’t see the embedded video, here is the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/tKEtm3HCrsw

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The Key to Innovation is Iterate and Test

Key points from this great TED talk by Joi Ito, the director of the MIT Media Lab.

You can’t plan the path, you can only set the direction. He talks about the “compass” guiding a project that followed a route which was totally unpredictable. There was no way to plan out the path to success from the beginning.

Instead, at each step, they asked “Where are we now?”

“What do we need to do next?”

“What’s in the way of doing that?”

“How do we deal with that?”

I’m paraphrasing here, of course, but the key is that once again we have an instance the Improvement Kata pattern in the wild.

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Ghost Victories – an excerpt from Upstream by Dan Heath

Amazon affiliate link to book listing for Upstream by Dan Heath
The link to the image takes you to the Amazon listing for the book. If you happen to order it, I get a small kickback, no cost to you, Just FYI.

Dan Heath has just published a new book, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen.

I just got the book, and am reading it now. I think there is going to be a lot of good material to discuss here.

But this post is about a marketing email with an excerpt really resonated with me, and I want to discuss that. I wrote to Dan Heath, and got his permission to use pieces of the excerpt here. (Thank you, Dan)

Management By Measurement = “Ghost Victories”

I have talked about what I call “management by measurement” in the past. In that post I told a true story of a company that placed very heavy emphasis on reducing inventory levels without digging into how that performance was achieved. The net result was a an embarrassed CEO during a quarterly analyst’s call. Not good.

Dan Heath talks about the same thing in Upstream. He calls it “ghost victories.”

[when] there is a separation between (a) the way we’re measuring success and (b) the actual results we want to see in the world, we run the risk of a “ghost victory”: a superficial success that cloaks failure.

The most destructive form of ghost victory is when your measures become the mission. Because, in those situations, it’s possible to ace your measures while undermining your mission.

He goes on to describe a case in the U.K. where the Department of Health established penalties for wait times longer than four hours in the Emergency Departments. And it worked. Wait times were reduced – at least on paper. Then the facts began to emerge:

 In some hospitals, patients had been left in ambulances parked outside the hospital—up until the point when the staffers believed they could be seen within the prescribed four-hour window. Then they wheeled the patients inside.

In the old post I referenced above, I said:

If making the numbers (or the sky) look good is all that matters, the numbers will look good. As my friend Skip puts it so well, this can be done in one of three ways:

  • Distort the numbers.
  • Distort the process.
  • Change the process (to deliver better results).

The third option is a lot harder than the other two. But it is the only one that works in the long haul.

All of this ties very well to Billy Taylor’s keynote at KataCon6 where he talked about the difference between “Key Activities” and “Key Indicators.” It is only when we can get down to the observable actions and understand the cause-and-effect relationship between those actions and the needle we are trying to move that we will have any effect.

To avoid the “Ghost Victory” trap, Dan recommends “pre-gaming” your metrics and thinking of all of the ways it would be possible to hit the numbers while simultaneously damaging the organization. In other words, get ahead of the problem and solve it before it happens.

He proposes three tests which force us to apply different assumptions to our thinking.

The lazy bureaucrat test

Imagine the easiest possible way to hit the numbers – with the least amount of change to the status quo. The story I cited above about inventory levels is a great example.

I can make my defect rates improve by altering the definition of “defect.”

There are lots of accounting games that can be played.

This is one to borrow from Skip’s list – How can the underlying numbers be distorted to make this one look good when it really isn’t?

The “rising tides” test

What external factors would have a significant impact on this metric? For example, I was working at a large company where a significant part of their product cost was a commodity raw material. As the market price went down, “costs” went down, and bonuses all around. But when the market price went up, “costs” went up and careers were threatened and bad reviews issued.

Those shifts in commodity prices had nothing to do with how those managers were doing their jobs, the tide rose and fell, and their fortunes with it.

The question in my mind is “What things would make this number look good, or bad, without any effort or change in the process we are trying to measure?”

The defiling-the-mission test

Hmmm. This is a tough one. (not really)

And it is a really common problem in our world of quarterly and annual expectations. In what ways could meeting these numbers in the short term ultimately hurt our reputation, our business, in the long term?

For example, I can think of an ongoing story of a product development project that hit its cost and schedule milestones (what was being measured). But they did so at the cost of destroying their reputation with customers, their Federal regulators and the public (and, to a large extent, their employees). They now have a new CEO, but the deeper problem has origins in the late 1990s.

How long will it take them to recover? That story is still playing out.

In another case I was in a meeting with a team that was discussing a customer complaint. The ultimate cause was a decision to substitute a cheaper material to reduce production costs. But this is a premium brand. There was a great question asked there: “Which of our values did we violate here?” – so the introspection was awesome.

Next step? Ask that question before the decision is made: “Is this decision consistent with our values?” If that makes you uncomfortable, then time to look in the mirror.

Then there is this little incident from 2010:

Picture of burning Deepwater Horizon oil platform
BP Deepwater Horizon fire – Photo by USCG

The metric was cost and schedule. Which makes sense. But the behavior that was driven was cutting corners on safety.

Getting Ahead of Problems

The book’s subtitle says it is about getting ahead of problems. I am looking forward to reading it and writing something more comprehensive.

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KataCon 2020: Billy Taylor on Key Actions

Key Actions vs. Key (Performance) Indicators

Billy Taylor – Photo by Michele Butcher / Lean Frontiers

Another concept Billy brought out in his presentation was the difference between what he calls “Key Actions” (KA) and “Key Indicators” (KI) – often called Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

He actually introduced me (and a couple of other attendees) to the concept the previous evening. (Did I mention that a lot of the rich discussion took place in the lobby bar?)

We use the concept in Toyota Kata, we call them the “process metric” and the “performance metric” but I think Billy’s explanation offers more clarity than I have been able to pull off in the past.

He also ties it back into “what we must practice” to get the outcome we want.

In short, I look at the outcomes (the performance) I want, then ask “What actions, if they were carried out consistently, would give me this performance?” Those are the things that must be tracked, improved, and practiced.

I kind of addressed this concept a few years ago in Delivering the Patient Satisfaction Experience. But I’d like to focus in a little better.

Continuing on the health care theme, a key performance indicator is “hospital acquired infections” – getting sick in the hospital. Everyone agrees that this metric should be as low as possible, ideally zero.

But just tracking the “hospital acquired infections” isn’t going to nudge the needle much. There may be periods when there are improvements if there is emphasis, but year on year these things tend to be frustratingly steady over the long run.

If I ask “What behaviors, what actions, should we take to diminish opportunities for these infections?” then one thing pops right up on top: Anyone interacting with a patient must wash (or sanitize) their hands before doing so. Every. Single. Time. That action alone would have a dramatic and measurable impact.

It is so important that some systems have automated tracking to ensure compliance with this simple rule. (It is amazing to me that, in general, some of the worst offenders are physicians, but that is a rant for another day.)

Key Action: Wash your hands. Key Indicator: Hospital Acquired Infections.

OK – what about industry?

“Our machine downtime is too high. We need to improve our availability.” Key Indicator, but not directly actionable. What actions, if we take them consistently, do we believe are critical to reliable equipment?

Now we can track those. What are the critical-to-reliability things that must be checked every shift? Are they checked? How do you know? Do you track misses?

How about your preventative maintenance schedule?

Is the machine in configuration? Or are there improvised repairs in place? Why?

These are behaviors, actions, that relate directly to the availability of the equipment.

Together, they form a hypothesis: “If we carry out these actions (and know we did), then we predict this KPI will improve.” For this to work, though, we have to test whether or not the actions were carried out AND test whether or not the KPI needle moves over time.

One thing I would add: Focus on what people should do. Not so much on things they should not do. It is a lot easier to get a new habit into place than it is to stamp out an existing one. Working to replace an undesired action with a desired action is a lot easier as well.

The things that keep people from carrying out the Key Actions are obstacles. Now we can engage the Improvement Kata process and get to work.

TWI comes into play as well. “Are we carrying out the actions as we should?” It is all to easy to tell someone to do something and assume they know how, or assume that the way they do it is the way you have in mind. Trust, then verify.

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KataCon 2020: Billy Taylor on Leadership

Photo by Michele Bucher / Lean Frontiers

Continuing my breakdown of Billy Taylor’s opening keynote at KataCon…

Key Bullet Points

  • People follow what you do before they follow what you say.
  • If you (as a leader) think you are above the process…
  • Deliberate practice on your practice of leadership. Focus on one thing.
  • Break down your leadership style [into elements]. Practice deliberately on one thing you want to reinforce or improve.

That second bullet is a real challenge for those of us who are in leadership positions (or even positions of influence). “If you think you are above the process…” – do you follow the standards and expectations you ask of others?

I think a good test would be “If a production worker corrected you, how would you respond?” If your internal emotional response (that initial feeling you have, not how you show yourself) is anything other than “Thank you for reminding me” then you are exempting yourself from the rules.

The other take-away:

Throughout his presentation, Billy was tying together the idea of “deliberate practice” and “developing leadership skills.” Leadership is a process, and processes can be broken down into their constituent elements and practiced.

This ties back perfectly to a broad spectrum of leadership development models. In the end, what we can control are:

  • What we say.
  • How we say it.
  • Who we say it to.
  • The structure of the environment that either inhibits or encourages the behaviors we want.

All of these things can be developed through experimentation, and then practiced. This is what Toyota Kata is about.